


To Last For Ever

by ForgottenJuliett



Series: HarryMort Challenge [1]
Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-15
Updated: 2012-11-15
Packaged: 2017-11-18 18:15:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/563988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForgottenJuliett/pseuds/ForgottenJuliett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry looks in the mirror. Even after many years of war and power struggles, his lover remains unchanging while his own hands are now too weak to reach out for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Last For Ever

**Author's Note:**

  * For [YumeNoTsuzuki (Yumejin)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yumejin/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [YumeNoTsuzuki (Yumejin)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yumejin/pseuds/YumeNoTsuzuki) in the [HarryMort_Prompt_Night](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/HarryMort_Prompt_Night) collection. 



Harry loathed mirrors.

His eyebrows furrowed at the images of Harrys staring back at him. The reflections of his eyes gleamed the same brilliant green empowered by anger and self-disgust, and Harry couldn’t bear looking at the sharp bones sticking out prominently through the mild fabric of his tight-fitting shirt.

Nor could he watch the excessively high cheekbones. Nor the skin tightening around his wrist. All of it just screamed sickness and the start of aging.

Which wouldn't have been a problem if he were a different man with a different lover.

Harry balled his hand. Eyes flickering, lips thinning, he lunged.

A fist slammed, the mirror shattered.

Dispassionate, Harry scrutinised the shards, some large, others so tiny he would have stepped on them without a second thought. He had smashed the blasted thing with reinforcing magic. He couldn’t rely on his own physical strength. Not anymore.

The splinters of mirror strewn across the fluffy carpet only made it worse. The hundreds of reflections taunted him from their homely nests among the dark green fibres, each exposing this image of him, of his sickly – _weak_ – body and gaunt face.

“Bloody Tom,” Harry spat out before picking up one of the largest shards. His pale hands trembled. “Do you see that I am willing to tolerate those bloody things in my room just for you?”

Another surge of magic, and this piece, too, broke into halves.

He breathed out.

The door creaked, and a second later the floor croaked. Further footsteps were muffled by the carpet.

“Evanesco,” the voice – and _oh_ , how it turned Harry on even when he wanted to stay angry – murmured. Seconds later, strong hands embraced him from behind. “Must I always come clean up your messes?”

Harry mentally grinned. Irritating Voldemort: mission complete.

He contemplated it until thin lips trailed down his neck, nipping and nibbling and kissing. Pale hands, almost as ghostly as his own, worked on the buttons of Harry’s black shirt.

Harry’s shouldered stiffened, and he refused to give in and moan out the man’s name.

“The whole thing is your fault anyway,” Harry retorted and grasped one of the hands before shoving it away. He sidestepped his lover and glided to sit at the edge of their bed. “Shouldn’t go around blaming the others for your own incompetence, my Lord. It gives a poor image of you to the mass media.”

Here, Harry paused and tapped his chin, as if in deep thought.

“Although it’s already too late for this. I guess you can just keep your murdering tendencies, then.”

Crimson eyes –and, Merlin, were they striking – flashed. After muttering a quick _reparo_ , Voldemort joined Harry on the bed, so that they were sitting side by side now.

Harry watched the mirror reconstruct with distaste twisting his lips into a grimace.

“Those are the messes I don’t want you to clean up,” he said softly. His eyes were glued to the mirroring sight of them together.

Bitterness tweaked Harry’s insides at how imperfect he looked, all bones, and stretching skin, and too sharp cheekbones, in comparison to his lover. His green eyes roved over Tom, gulping in every small detail of the sculptured face that seemed as if made of marble. The patrician nose, the thin and defined lips, the smooth skin...

It would all preserve through eternity.

It would all stay even when Harry would be nothing but a mess of ashes in his grave, and his very name would fall victim to the never-ending cycles of history. Would Tom forget him then? Harry wondered. Unbeknownst to him, his teeth worried the bottom lip.

Harry was already pushing thirty. Lines were just beginning to appear on his face, even though he remained small in stature after all the loving care the Dursleys had washed him with.

And Harry wouldn’t even last that much longer.

In the mirror, cherry eyes met his. If Tom knew of the thoughts passing through Harry’s head, he didn’t comment on it.

Instead, the man chose to hook his arm around Harry’s waist and draw him close, mane of black hair flush to the broad chest.

“Why did you leave the bed?” the Dark Lord murmured in displeasure. His breath tickled Harry’s ear, creating a strange but familiar sensation.

The younger man shrugged, then raised his head to look straight into the wine red eye.

“Dunno. I wanted to?” he offered with a cocky smirk, shaking off the previous distress and depression. Those emotions wouldn’t leave him, they never did, but Tom’s presence could dispel them for a little while longer. He revelled in the seething glare his beloved threw at him. “Besides, you must stop keeping me in here all days long. It does nothing for my complexion.”

Harry’s hand shot up into the air as the man waved it in front of Tom to prove his point.

“See? I swear, if I keep this up, _Malfoy_ will get jealous of my zombie white skin.”Harry scoffed, then snorted as his expression cleared. “This sod is like a wizarding equivalent of a stay-at-home mum. All he does is wipe the snot from his little spawns’ faces, and gush about every little bloody thing they do.”

Voldemort raised an unimpressed eyebrow.

“Must we talk about Malfoy now?” he hissed into Harry’s ear. Another set of shudders. Harry’s eyebrow twitched in annoyance. Honestly. “I get enough of him at the gatherings. Don’t try to evade my questions. Why did you get up? Should I tie you down next time with leather ropes?”

The man’s anger was swept away by a leer. A pink tongue darted out to lick his lips.

“Although I _will_ enjoy the image.”

With a sneer, Harry flicked Voldemort’s hand, the one sneaking to his inner thighs, away. He sobered up next moment.

“I want to live, Tom,” Harry confessed, ignoring the sharp look Voldemort sent him at the name. For Harry, Tom was just Tom. He liked to differentiate between himself and the followers grovelling at his beloved’s feet. Sucking in a deep breath, Harry went on. “Not exist. I’m ill. I’m dying.”

He ignored Voldemort’s tensing muscles.

“No sense to gloss it over. All my life, I was held down by someone. First, it was the Dursleys. Then, the Weasleys, and Hermione, and Sirius, and Remus appeared. They cared about me – my friends, I mean – but none of them cared for me enough to stretch out a hand haul me out of the old codger’s wrinkly clutches.”

Voldemort’s hand tightened on his shoulder, yet Harry didn’t notice, his eyes glazed as he wandered through the mental labyrinths of his memories.

“And then I met you.” His voice had lowered to a whisper by this point. “A man I had believed to be my ruin, yet who turned out to be salvation. You were my freedom and the key to the emotions I had believed non-existent in me. You set me free from the chains of duty to the world –the world I hadn’t even _known_ before my eleventh birthday – and I chose to pour my trust and my love in you.”

“What are you leading to?” Voldemort leaned in, cradling Harry closer. Their black hair melted into each other’s, and noses touched.

Harry breathed in the breath they shared.

“Now, you are taking it all away from me,” Harry confessed, so quietly his voice was barely audible. Crimson eyes widened. “You hardly ever let me out. You fear so much that I am going to drop dead in a second, that you go as far as relocating your troops just so war-hardened Death Eaters can spy after a meagre sick man. Of course, they can apply their war-mongering and homicidal skills just nicely if I have another relapse.” He rolled his eyes.

“And,” Harry spat out, anger rolling off of him in waves. “You won’t stop repairing those darned mirrors.” He rose and thrust himself back, as far away from the man as possible. “Every bloody pound of weight I lose is evident with every look. This thing is like a measurement of my life span, Tom!”

Harry deflated. He breathed hard and avoided looking anywhere near the man he both loved and hated, the one they had shared so many moments with, both happy and sad, fateful and mundane.

After a few moments of silence, filled only with Harry’s gasping breaths, Voldemort broke it.

“I placed those mirrors because I believed they could make you see yourself as you are.” When Harry opened his mouth to argue, Voldemort raised his hand and stabbed him with a glower. “You are _delicious_. My intentions were to show it to you, despite all your protests. I wanted you to look into those mirrors,” Voldemort vaguely gestured at the room, “and come to admire this casual perfection you have.”

A sad smile played on Harry’s lips. He shook his head.

“You certainly flatter me today, my Lord. Alas, I don’t believe you,” Harry concluded simply, a faraway look to his eyes. “All I see in my reflection is weakness. A reminder that my clock is ticking, that time is not endless, and that one day...”

Drifting off, Harry turned away. His hands shook, and if it was from the disease – the abuse of magical resources, they had called it – or from emotion, he didn’t know. Wasn’t brave enough to decipher.

“One day, only you will remain.”

Shattering sound.

Wide green eyes darted to the opposite wall.

Nothing was there.

The floor, both the wooden tiles and the carpet, was covered by the intricate design of mirror shards. They glittered under the streaks of sunshine caressing them, and Harry couldn’t look away. Not even when an unconscious smile tugged at his lips, nor when husky hands swept him up.

He only drew away his gaze when his lover devoured his lips in a demanding kiss. Harry responded. With his battling tongue and hands that suddenly went rogue and roved over his older lover’s body, he conveyed as much passion as he could. Voldemort tugged at his hair, thrusting it back in a rough gesture, and Harry responded in kind, pulling at Voldemort’s black tresses.

The breath was out, and yet they could hardly stop. A second long pause, just enough for the kiss not to turn deadly, and back again to the clashing tongues and roaming hands.

When they parted, a thread of saliva hang between.

Voldemort traced Harry’s cheek with a long finger, going down to the corner of the man’s lips, bypassing the small chin, and eventually ending up on the collarbone.

“Now,” the older man hissed into his lover’s face. “That this annoying issue is out, can we proceed? I didn’t sneak out of the office for dilly-dallying.”

With those words, the Dark Lord pushed Harry on his back and ripped open the shirt.

Harry threw his head back in a delighted laughter. He allowed the kisses and caresses and touches.

When Tom held him, Harry could stop believing in mirrors and death.

**Author's Note:**

> To everyone: This will have a second part! There will be some memories for a better comprehending of this oneshot. Also, it will be quite creepy. And not quite so happy.
> 
> To YumeNoTsuzuki: I hope you are not too disappointed! Also, as to the reason why I can't put both parts up immediately: today, inspiration regarding the second chapter hit me, and out of a standard 1,500 long oneshot it grew into a 5,000 word beast... It's written, but the proofreading is to be done, so I'll upload it in a few hours (which is /still/ going to be Friday in my time line, so I shouldn't be breaking a rule here. Just wanted to warn :D).


End file.
